Likeable Writing

Being liked is something you don't get by trying too hard.

I spent a good part of this morning trying to come up with something likeable to write about. Thoughts came and went, but none of them stuck on. Well, its not like there isn't much happening in my life. No sir (or madam, my apologies), there is no dearth of things to write about.

I could write about clarinetist and composer Shankar Tucker's music videos that I have become a big fan of. Or about the wonderfully enlightening week I had in New York as part of StartingBloc - an experience I definitely regret not having written about much much earlier. Or about my jam-packed and intense rendezvous with startup scene at a StartupWeekend event in SanFranscisco. 

In each case, I'm trying to envision the end product - a complete piece of writing. I'm trying to compare which topic would produce a better finished piece. Best work first, right? But soon enough I realise how utterly foolish this endeavor of 'comparison' is. The process of writing on a certain topic changes my opinion of that topic. I am forced to actually think about the topic, go over the details, adjust my thoughts as my writing evolves. So I'll never know how the end product will look.

I believe each piece of writing should get what it rightly deserves - a deferred judgement. Evaluating your writing before completing it can do more harm than good. And since I cant stop evaluating myself on any of the aforementioned topics, I shall defer those posts for later.

There are certain times when you sit in front of a blank screen, hopeful and lightly expectant. And magically an hour or so later you have a piece of writing that might leave you genuinely surprised (in a good, bad or horrific way).

This is one of those times. I wont pass any judgement until this has been published and its too late to do anything else. This particular piece of writing (if it can be called that) has been a surprise!

Misscommunication

There was once a lovely Miss
with whom I started talking.
Talking to her was more refreshing
than a midnight walk in the park.
All I wanted to do was to hear her voice
everything else was just mundane noise.
ahh... wonderful Miss communication!

But will communication overcome
a great distance?
Little did i know
voices get blurred over oceans.
Something was certainly amiss
and when we do talk its not the same
Wish I could talk to you still
without the hint of a chill.
ahh... I miss Communication!!

There must be a lesson in all this
that I just dont seem to learn.
Sometimes things are too late
and you need to leave everything to fate.
aaaargh... I hate miscommunication!!!

Family matters

Heres an adviserly rambling blog post....
For a change, I have the whole house to myself. With a lazy weekend in front of me, my mind wanders casually over the past few weeks of life here. With my parents' visit , they have been quite hectic. Now that they have gone, there is a silence in the house I'm not used to.

Family matters. They are the only ones who stand by you go with you wherever you go. Its often that you take these relationships for granted. Which is bad. There... I made my point for this blog.

People handle staying away from family differently. Some of them miss their family and constantly whine about it. They make a flurry of phone calls across the Atlantic everyday. They share their many concerns and moments of happiness with people back home. Some others try to hide themselves from their homesick feelings. They tell themselves they can handle things on their own and see their impulses to call back home as a sign of weakness.

Probably the only unconditional support you will get is from your family. Dont underestimate that.

Beautiful Niagara

Two faces of the Fall. Rainbow. Ahhh..... Seeing Niagara Falls close up is something I enjoyed immensely. Looking at the torrent of water gushing down, you can help being in awe of such natural beauty.

Home Sweet Home

To travel half way across the world, return after a year
and feel like everything happened just yesterday

To eat like a king who has everything in the world lined up for him

To sleep like a simple man who has nothing in the world to worry about

To see with delight how people have changed
and how people have not changed

To realize with surprise how I have changed and remained the same

To return back home

Flow - The Neurobiology of Excellence

Here is a very interesting excerpt on the concept of "flow" - from the pages of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman :
---------------------------------------------------------------

A composer describes those moments when his work is at its best:

You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don't exist. I've experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And it just flows out by itself.


His description is remarkably similar to those of hundreds of diverse men and women-rock climbers, chess champions, surgeons, basketball players, engineers, managers and even filing clerks-when they tell of a time they outdid themselves in some favoured activity. The state they describe is called "flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the University of Chicago psychologist who has collected many such accounts of peak performance during two decades of research. Athletes know this state of grace as the "zone" where excellence becomes effortless, crowd and competitors disappearing into a steady absorption in the moment. Diane Roffe-Steinrotter, who captured a gold medal in skiing at the 1994 Winter Olympics said after she finished her turn at ski racing that she remembered nothing about it but being immersed in relaxation: "I felt like a waterfall".

Being able to enter flow is emotional intelligence at its best, flow represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performance and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. Yet flow(or a milder microflow) is an experience almost everyone enters from time to time, particularly when performing at their peak or stretching beyond their former limits. Its is perhaps best captured by ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmoniously one.

The experience is a glorious one: the hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture. Because flow feels so good, it is intrinsically rewarding. It is a state in which people become utterly absorbed in what they are doing, their awareness merged with their actions. Indeed it interrupts flow to reflect too much on what is happening-the very thought"I'm doing this wonderfully" can break the feeling of flow. Attention becomes so focused that are aware only of the narrow range of perception related to the immediate task, losing track of time and space. A surgeon for example, recalled a challenging operation during which he was in flow; when he completed the surgery he noticed some rubble on the floor of the operating room and asked what happened. He was amazed to hear that while he was so intent on the surgery part of the ceiling had caved in - he hadn't noticed at all.

---------------------------------------------------------------

row your boat

Row row row your boat
the journeys' half done
the morning is yet to come
still time for the rising sun

Dark doubts cloud over the horizon
a trace of fear, a hint of uncertainity
add more meaning to the black eternity

But all these fade away
no more with the wind you sway
when you conjure up an iron will
and push like hell towards the distant hill

So you row row row your boat
the journeys' half done
the morning is yet to come
still time for the rising sun

In the pitch black darkness you see clearly
the green grass the dotted trees
the temple on the hill and the monkeys
on the beach kids play and scream
all vividly in your dream

Your doubts were mistaken, you realise
you'll always have good company
never did you think you'll come this far
but just look up, theres always with you the northern star

So you row row row your boat
the journeys' half done
the morning is yet to come
still time for the rising sun

...

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

-Steve Jobs

Been a month

Its been around a month since I arrived at Purdue. So many things have happened in so less a time. The ability of humans in general (and me in particular)to adapt to surrounding environments constantly surprises me. In just a few days things have started to turn from the extraordinary to the routine. Im no longer overwhelmed by the different sights, sounds and smells (or the lack of them by Indian standards) around me.

You cant help being inspired by the professors and the research happening in this place. You begin to realize how much more there is to learn. By learn I mean really learn.. and not "get good grades" or "pass an exam" and the like. The teaching in class (for most part) makes you think. Which is good.

Not being in contact with people back home is like a dull persistent body ache. You can talk on the phone or chat online, but there's never a good time to say goodbye. Some things will just take some getting used to, I guess.

Of course as a grad student you have no time. There is always something important to do right away. And more often than not (at least in the beginning of the semester) the tasks are very interesting. Very difficult and time consuming, but interesting nevertheless. This is one of those rare occurrences when I don't feel guilty of spending time writing a blog.

More to come later. Fervently hope I get the time (and the clear conscience) to blog again!

Off I go

Somebody’s off to Purdue this year to do his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering.
If the manages to hop on to the plane before it takes off.
If he miraculously avoids misplacing his passport.
If he doesn't get stuck in maddening Bangalore traffic.
…you get the drift.

The last year in general has been one hell of a year for me (for those with no sense of humor…should I say no sense of bad humor ... by somebody in the previous para I meant myself).The last two years in particular were easily among the toughest in my life in more ways than one. Shifting companies, losing touch with once-close friends, preparing for cat, applying for ms, battling loneliness, picking up pieces. Trying to make sense of my part in this universe. And what not. I’ll try to pen down those memories some time later in another post perhaps. For now…its been one hell of a roller coaster ride.

And I'm guessing the coming years won’t be a cake walk either!! So here I am , writing posts in the lull before the storm. Here’s me wishing myself the best of luck. I know I need it!!

People with Passion

There are a few people in my life Im very grateful to. They are people with passion in whatever they do. Talking to them for a good twenty minutes is a big shot in the arm. Their passion rubs off on me.


Just recently Ive had a few such conversations and it feels really good! Man needs roti kapda aur makaan to exist, but passion and vision to really live life. In fact as I write this I realise how most of the times most of us are lacking in this respect. Any other time I wouldnt have given myself the permission to write this. Thinking how silly it might sound to someone reading this. But not now. There are times man needs to exchange ideas with like minded people. Talking with other big dreamers allows you to remove the mental blocks and fears, and sort of fly through the castles in the air that the mind conjures. Castles are first built in the air, then they are resurrected on the ground. The castle on the ground is just symbolic of a much much bigger thing - an idea - maybe with only a hint of possibility. It serves the purpose of reminding us of the wonders our brain can conjure. The real world is within the mind!!

Visa Power! Went and got it.

I got my visa today from the Chennai consulate.

Luckily for me my cousin lives in Chennai, so accommodation,food and entertainment was well taken care of. Yesterday was spent mostly in the last minute arrangement of documents, ironing of shirts, ignoring of comments from well wishers on how people in general(and I in particular) should keep everything ready a few (read many) days before an important event.

Next day morning I was all set for my interview. Adrenalin was oozing in my veins. I found an auto and the infamous haggling over fares began. The entire journey was spent having alternating animated discussions on how tough life is for auto-karas in Chennai, and how often passengers are taken for a BIG ride (in more ways than one ) by the aforementioned autokaras. I didn't have much time at all to ponder over the questions that could be fired at me. I left the auto decidedly refreshed and invigorated by all the verbal jostling.


The VISA consulate at Anna Salai is quite a fortress. In a not so auspicious move I got down and tried to enter the building from the exit. And I was kicked out before I could get in. Anyway I walked all the way around to the entry point and stood in the looong queue. Nervous candidates and more nervous parents were standing there. I met so many people from Bangalore, from my college , from my school.. the world is really a small place.

One thing I probably realised - how I was lacking in good organization and filing of documents. Most of the people had come with such neat plastic "document suitcases" which contained flaps for all papers and even little coloured labels - ready made with text like Marks Card , TOEFL , I20 etc. And there I was carrying ALL my important original documents in a simple plastic cover.

As usual I had come around one hour early for my interview at 8:30 am. I had to wait till around 10.00 am till I got my chance. And five minutes later, a plump jolly American woman told me my Visa was approved. I did a wild tribal celebratory dance after hearing this. In my mind of course. And then had a coffee and walked out of there.

About the interview and the two plus hour wait .. I'll probably try to write in another post..suffice it to say that its not an easy wait and you get a zillion thoughts and emotions running through your head. So now its time to look forward and hope for the best...

Men ...cry??

Only few men cry. Like Roger Federer for example.
The others all hold it back.

No perfect time

Philosophical musings :
For most of the important things we do, there is no perfect time. Some of us spend eons planning, forecasting and trying to make things go exactly the way we want them to. This is where we forget the doing things right is nowhere as important as doing the right things. At the right time. We often post-pone the most important tasks waiting till we get enough time or the quintessential mood and environment that the important task deserves. And guess what, the perfect time more often than not never comes. The task then remains a nagging shadow following you all around all the time. Finally things come to such a boil that you just want to get get over with the damm task at hand. At some point you become convinced that things cannot possibly go any worse(which is wrong in the first place.Things can always get worser). And proceed with the task painfully. Once this is over its such a big relief! And then a few days later you look back and discover that your life didnt depend on the single task.And wonder why the hell you made such a fuss about it in the first place.

Lying on the lawn

Not many things give me more pleasure than lying down on the ITPL lawn nowadays. After a hard days work (hard days work....I can hear the cynics!) a good lie down on a bed of lush green grass does wonders to the body. And more so to the mind. The process is a natural tension remover, the moment you lie down all mundane worries vanish with the wind!

I’ve been doing this regularly for quite some time now. An ideal time to do this would be in the evening around 6.30 to 7.30. A sunset can’t be seen from ITPL, but at least the changing light can be appreciated. You should take a stroll at this time, go down to the ITPL lawn and look for a decent spot. There used to be a lot of open space in ITPL sometime back. A big chunk of the grounds are now closed with construction work going on there. Presently there’s only a small rectangular patch of grass right opposite the Inventor building I work at. While the grass cover over here is not lush all around there are quite a few good spots you can find.

Picture this:
You are lying down on the lawn. As you look up you see towering steel and glass structures on three sides which seem to be welded at the edges. The U shaped monolithic block frames the deep blue open sky. There are a few Gulmohur trees on the lawn. Green leaves and few bright red bursts of flowers present an almost stark contrast with the unforgiving gray and glass all around.

Roll your eyes around and you can see chauffeur driven cars circling past you and your patch of green grass. A few irate cab drivers circle around the lawn waiting for passengers while other sleepy passengers yawn at passing cars hoping it is for them.

The lawn is riddled with muddy brown patches and there are places that are water logged. But all these just add to a sense of natural beauty that tries to thrive in the midst of computer filled concrete behemoths. As you continue gazing up, you see birds (and bats?) flying around at various levels in the sky. Some go in neat circular arcs, others make zig zag arbit flights. Many seem to be chasing what look like smaller birds or insects. As time passes a few mosquitoes appear from nowhere. Some get too close for comfort. They mosquitoes have a sense of taste (pun intended) too.. a selective few on the lawn walk around with black fuzzy clouds over their heads.

The light all around is diffused and golden - partly due to fading sunlight and partly due to the glow from the lamps encircling the park. Sometimes when there is a cloud or two, the lighting and scenery looks like its taken right out of an illustrated children’s book. As time passes the lamps grow brighter and white lights spill out on to the lawn from the concrete monsters. The sky meanwhile turns blue green orange copper purple. Somewhere in a corner a minuscule white dot becomes visible in the sky. With time more such scattered dots come into view and begin to sparkle. Things in the mind seem to become clearer as dots become stars become constellations on the sky above.

Some random building begins to emit a low pitched vibrating buzz. A wailing siren brings relief to factory workers somewhere close by and momentary irritation to others next to me. A steady white noise flows from the river of traffic just outside. In the background of such noises from man made jungles, happy voices float all around punctuated intermittently by raucous peals of laughter. People walk around on the lawn with cell phones - talking earnestly, arguing, cajoling, negotiating, flirting. The waterfall of voices around you is predominantly bubbly and soothing, quite unlike the crisp and somewhat harsh sounds within the buildings. Steady streams of people leave the buildings and pour on to the sidewalk. They look carefree and visibly happy.

A tiny wriggling sensation creeps up the ankle and moves on to the shins, cleaving a path towards the knee. Soon many such tiny tickles begin to be felt over various parts of the body. But you are comfortably lazy and decide to ignore them, taking in all the sensations. Time seems to stall and you are almost half asleep. In fact its almost time for the bus already! You stagger on to your feet and leave the lawn, whistling with the wind, kicking pebbles on the sidewalk……

Happiness?

What does it really mean to be happy?

Is being happy a journey or a destination?

What is the connection between happiness and excellence?

Does long term happiness imply sacrifice of momentary happiness?

Are happiness and sadness two sides of the same coin?

no need to apologise, really!

some times at night when I flop on to the bed
I think of what I should or should'nt have said
everything seems to have happened by chance..
should I or should'nt I have cared for a second glance?

no one is all evil, not everyones perfect
its best not to have too much to expect
everyones trapped in their own little world
in their own actions and emotions they're hurled

its ok if sometimes I cant get
whats going on in your mind
there are some awkward pauses i'll bet
but its time to leave all those behind

so let you be you and let me be me
theres no need to apologise, really!

A near-perfect blackout

While returning home late last night there was a power cut.Not that power cuts are anything out of the odinary, but they almost always occurred in the afternoons in my locality. The darkness would have been pitch black but for the lights in the Brigade Gardenia apartments..trust those people to have uninterrupted power supply. And right in front of my home too.

Immediately the power cut took me down memory lane back to younger days when power cuts were amazing fun. Having lived for quite some time in apartment colonies, I remembered that in those days nothing was as fun and scary at the same time as playing hide and seek in the fading twilight, with no current powering up apartment lights and TV's in the various houses. And its not an everyday experience to be sitting on an open terrace under the stars with friends and family. You could do this any day, but its not quite the same as doing it on a power cut day. A power cut sort of gives you the moral license to sit back and relax without worrying about mundane daily 'action items'.

Theres something magical, naughty (I don’t mean eloping couples, but that’s probably a good way to spend a power cut too right?) and unnatural about a power cut. Its like going back in time. With no instant gratification like the TV and the net, time dilation seems to occur, suddently there is too much time on one's hands and nothing immediate to do till power comes back again. I get an eerie feeling thinking .. so this is how my great-great-great-great-grandfather must have spent his time in the evenings! A little depressing really.. Im so lucky to be living in this generation!

The other side effect of a power cut is the 'family bonding' thing which happens. Suddenly you have to spend time in the house together with only family members for company. And you realize how much you take the main people in your life for granted. In fact a routine power cut may do more good in the family bonding sense than a hurried visit to a movie in a mall through maddning traffic jams.

This also got me thinking - how five minutes of a power cut can trigger thoughts which I can never get even if I force myself for two hours. There must be some sense to these soft "stuff" like ambience, setting ,architecture of a place etc..things which we genarally take for granted.

Anyway, the power has come again, and the ambience has changed! Time to go, the internet is calling …

An abysmal joke before signing off..
Which is the most proactive environmental organization in Karkataka?
The Karnataka Electricity Board of course!

How to Take A Big Decision

Here are some fundaes I'd like to share with the readers (ie mostly myself) on taking big decisions in life. There is no right way to do this, and its not many a time that you have to take a big decision. Im talking about really important decisions and choices one makes like choosing a college, a career , a company , a partner and so on. Most of the following are random thoughts that come to me now and then and Ive tried to organize them below..see if you can make sense.

a) Dont over-analyze. Indians in general are the calculating and brainy sort. And engineers in particular. So we have the habit of trying to approach life decisions in a rational and logical manner. And fail miserably most of the time.
Its often best to go with intuition. In all these decisions, its possible to do only so much of analysis. Using obvious logical methods, you could probably narrow down your search to anywhere between 2-3 choices. In my experience the choice almost invariably boils down to two close ones. After elimination the obvious choices, its really dosent matter which one you choose.
The important thing is to go with the gut feel. Rational explanations are far more useful to eliminate obvious choices than to select the optimum ones. You could say with some confidence that going to College ranked #10 is better than going to a college ranked #30. But to choose between colleges ranked #10 and #15 ?? If you factor in things like location, peer group, alumni network etc.. you could take months to decide which is better. And after these months of confusion you'll still be at square one, there is no return on the time invested in making the choice. You could have chosen college #15 two months back and prepared for it , and be in much better shape. Its takes some skill to identify when its time to stop thinking and start doing.

Contrast this with the way a child makes decisions. If you hold a red and a blue shirt and ask him to choose, theres' one color he'll immediately like. Ask him why and he'll probably not be able to tell you why he likes it , or may give a random reason. But the main idea is to choose. After a point in time all that matters is whether you have a shirt or not, and not if its blue or red!

b) There is no such thing as a perfect choice, its up to you to make your choice perfect. Making the choice is just the beginning, most of the effort is in sticking with the choice and ploughing down the path you choose. Once you make a choice ,you really need to 'subjugate the self' and proceed with it . There is often a tendency to look back and wonder what would have happened if you did the other thing... But this is only going to take away precious time from proceeding with the present choice. There is this thing which people call passion, belief or faith which is much much more important than the actual choice you make.Whatever choices you choose, you have to believe that it will work out. And there need not, or should not be a rational/scientific or rational explanation to this belief, its all an intuitive process.

Wherever humans are involved, there is no such thing as a correct choice. Because, err..we all know that to err is human. And add to it the fact the human problems are a function of time and external factors. Todays problems and questions will seem insignificant tomorrow, and one meeting with a long lost friend is enough to make you want to re-evaluate your life goals. So how do you solve a question that keeps changing every now and then??
Anyway, I think I might have digressed a little here and missed the point of this point. What Im trying to say is once you take a choice, get on and just do it!
By the way here's a first(and very crude?) approximation of the human brain according to me:


c) Dont ask too many people for advice, only talk to the people who really matter. When you are making a big decision, the best feedback you can get is from someone who knows you very well as a person or someone who knows you well professionally. Asking anyone else for advice is quite useless and just adds to the confusion. In fact the more you ask many people about what to do etc, the more it means youre not sure what to do yourself. This almost always points to your lack of confidence in the decision you've taken. Perhaps you need more time to think over your decision.

d) Dont follow others peoples footsteps blindly without knowing exactly why youre doing this. This is a similar point to the prevoius one.. Till now most of the decisions we take are in reality already made. Many of us end up doing engineering , taking up jobs or going for higher studies without really deciding why. For a fortunate majority of us, there were always some seniors or some general path laid out that you could follow. Of course the path in itself is tough, but the decision to take it is already made most often in a group phemomenon. We see lots of friends taking up the path, we see society (family/friends) generally nodding in approval when we take this path and decide to follow the gang. We never get the chance to ask some important questions to ourselves before choosing such paths like :

• Would I do the same thing if all my friends backed out tomorrow?
  
• Would I do the same thing if later I fail to get the kind of response from the people who matter to me?
  
• Do I consider taking this path and possibly failing to be still better than not taking this path at all?
  
• Would I have any regrets later on for not having done this ?
  

Its not wrong if the real reason for making a choice is any of the points above, but its wrong not to be aware of it.
For example the real reason you are taking choice A may be because you want to generally please society. Thats fine as long as you know thats the reason for making choice A. But if you dont know this , and later in the future you find that choice A does not really please society, youre screwed. By then you've already walked down path A and youre probably wondering why youre finding this path so difficult. Then at this crutial time you have to do some soul searching and figure out what you actually like...Choice A or pleasing society thing. And you have to fight the inertia factor..making a choice once youve decided while on Path A is one hell of a lot tougher than making a choice in the initial stage.


e)Keep the Planning and Execution part separate. Ive come up with the following gyan on how to make a choice, plan for it and go ahead with the decision. Also I learnt how to use basic Visio features in the process.


There is a Plan and Execute phase for every choice you make. During the planning phase, you sort of weigh in all options, see which choice will lead to the most favorable outcome and make a decision. And before entering the execute phase you pray, meditate or generally pep yourself up to tackle the way your life is going to shape up in the future. And then once you enter the Ecexute phase, you forget about the result and bother about the process of achieveing whatever goals you set for yourself.

So the four stages in the 'choice making process' are shown in the diagram. Lets now see the various common ways of making a choices ... (I cant believe how much of a lecture this blog is turning out to be!)

1. The ideal case Well this is the mose optimum way to come up with a plan and execute it well ahead in the time frame. You spend some time understanding your choices, take some time making a good plan, decouple yourself from the other plans and start executing the plan. The main point here is to ensure you enter the Execute phase only after ther Planning phase is well onver.
   Decouple?? Decoupling refers to giving up or forgetting the remaining choices that you didnt take. The little orange bar is the most crucial part in the decision making process. Personally I find that the toughest to get through. The decouple stage is the one in which you really get ready and begin to accept the choice you have taken. If you do the decoupling properly, there's no looking back on the choices from then on. This is important because its natural human tendency to start questioning tha choice, once the path taken becomes more and more tough. In some sense the orange part is where you build your resolve to focus single-mindedly on the task at hand.
   


2. Heres what would happen if there is no sufficient decoupling. The choice is made and you're in the execution phase, but youre not 100% sure of the choice you made. Invarialbly there will be many a time during the execute stage when you start to question the choice you made (indicated by the numerous blue bands during the execute phase). Every time you hit a fairly big obstacle during the execute phase , you start re-evaluating your goals. This is a double whammy - you lose time trying to make new plans and you take an equal amount of time to come back to reality and get in the groove of carrying out your present unhappy choice. So by this way although you started the execute phase earlier ,you take much longer and more painful to reach the end.
   


3. The third case is one which you usually make when you are younger/ inexperienced. Here you do some research, planning and decoupling but all in a limited manner. Because of the short time before execution, there is more of a chance that you didnt make the most optimum choice. But due to the decoupling , you dont bother too much about this and proceed to the execution phase. Once you finish the process, you can probably see a lot of scope for improvement. There would be some hard lessons to be learnt, and you begin to see how to make a more informend choice next time.
   


4. The last one is a sad attempt at bringing some humor into this post. These are guys who are day dreamers and who dont have the balls to do anything (add appropriate metaphor for girls here). They can come up with some choices to make, but are too insecure or lazy to begin any choice in particular.
   

So here's to big decision making in the future!

CAT. And Afterlife.

The CAT exam has been a very touchy subject for me for many reasons. Since the CAT results were announced I've tried to write on this, but the whole project of preparing for and writing CAT was sooo intense that I could not get a perfect post to do justice to what I wanted to say.
So after much deliberation, I gave up on getting out the perfect post and I'll just put three random lessons I learnt from writing CAT ...

1) Failure is not as bad as the fear of failure.
2) Confidence in whatever you do is a prerequisite for success.
3) Having a set of like minded people with you on your journey is essential.